The Political Chase

Joe Allbough on Michael Brown

Josh Marshall has a post on why  Joe Allbaugh hired Michael Brown.

A teaser from Josh’s post:

"A strong ethics attorney who’d just gotten canned from his last job because of ethical improprieties. "

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Thailand Recovery vs. US Recovery

I briefly noted earlier that CNN reported Thailand’s tsunami recovery performance was better than the US Katrina recovery.  I read the transcript and this is the story line.

Wolf Blitzer quizzed CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick on the status of the mortuary teams (dead body recovery).  Feyerick reported that "Thailand appears to have done a better job collecting its dead after the tsunami than the United States following Hurricane Katrina."

It appears that FEMA’s standard practice is to contract with a private company for body recovery.   Kenyon International has unofficially been awarded the contract for Katrina.  In other words, the contract hasn’t been signed yet.  Kenyon has done a limited amount of work, but has not gone into full operation because their "recovery efforts have been limited by a paralyzing amount of bureaucracy on the part of the federal government."

(ed. note: Kenyon supplied mortuary teams to Thailand.)

The story doesn’t get better. 

The federal government supposedly has mortuary teams but they will not collect any victims.  Why?  I don’t know.  According to Feyerick, the US mortuary teams will not collect any bodies; they wait for bodies to be brought to them.  That’s pretty slick if you can get away with it.

Now, this is the kicker.  Michael Brown must have miromanaged this personally. 

"[O]ne private company was actually told simply to go back to Houston until the federal government got in touch with them.  And this is a private company that has portable morgues, they’ve got teams ready to be dispatched.  And because FEMA hasn’t signed off on any sort of contract, it’s been 12 days now, and there’s no coordinated effort on the ground to try to gather these victims."

"So you have people, individuals, people from the National Guard, once they find somebody, they’ll get that body, but no real overall coordinated effort."

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